


twinkle, twinkle, little city lights

by MasterOfAllImagination



Series: you and him and a gun [1]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Eggsy's POV, M/M, Pre-Slash, shit i write instead of doing my java homework
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:52:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3485522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterOfAllImagination/pseuds/MasterOfAllImagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eggsy stands on a balcony in Rome and stares out over the city.  Harry displays gestures of affection that may or may not be indicative of romantic feelings.  Other similarly moody things occur.  All in all, it’s pretty ambiguous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	twinkle, twinkle, little city lights

The city appears to be a solid mass of red and orange and blue lights-- until, that is, you focus on it-- let your eye linger for more than half a moment over its fragmented luminescence-- and you see it twinkling, a shimmer that imitates the stars blocked out by Rome’s own light pollution.

A fair trade, you think. 

An eye for an eye.

Even in your current stoic mood you cannot rake your gaze over the same stretch of primary colors for longer than twenty minutes.  You head inside shortly, hands stuffed in your pockets in a half-hearted defense against the wind-chill on the 23rd-story balcony.  It is little use.  The fabric of your suit may be made to withstand bullets, but it is not so well at handling cold climes.

“See anything interesting?” Harry asks, not looking up from the dossiers spread out on the small table before him.  The paper intel is old-fashioned and unwieldy, but Kingsman is cooperating with the Vatican on this mission, and their people are not as up with current technology as Merlin would like them to be. 

“Nah,” you say, shaking your head and shrugging.  Your hands don’t leave your pockets, and it makes the gesture awkward.  “Just lights, I guess.  Same as London.”

Now, however, Harry sets down the manila folder in his hands and fixes you with a stare straight through his thick-framed glasses.  “Impossible.  London’s singular aesthetics are incomparable with the plainness of Rome.”

You scoff.  “Never figured you fer the sentimental type.  Not ‘specially for ugly ol’ London."  Finally taking your hands out of your pockets, you settle in the seat kiddy-corner to Harry’s.  He faces you, his attention no longer on the dossiers.

“Nonsense.  We are an _international_ organization,” he hems.

“Harry.”

He sighs, but it is a fond sigh.  “Perhaps just this kingsman then, I’m afraid.  A shame, too.  London deserves more appreciation than she receives.”

"If you say so."  You barely even bother to mask the tone of adolescent teasing with something even remotely resembling sarcasm or wit.  In any case, Harry would have stripped it away within moments with those acidic glasses of his.  Sometimes you reckon they see through everything.

_Wonder if Merlin’s got ‘em rigged with an x-ray capability_ , you idly muse, and then the idle thought turns more pointed, and you are lost on that tangent until….

“Eggsy.  _Eggsy_.”  Harry’s hand shakes you firm and warm on your arm just below the shoulder.

“Sorry, what’d you say?”

“The thistle sifter sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles.”

“ _Huh?_ ”

He clasps the side of your neck briefly with the hand that has not moved and shakes his head.  “Well.  At least I've got your attention now.  You were somewhere else a moment ago.”  He lingers, eyes darting fitfully over your face, something unreadable in your current weariness etched in the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and the set of his mouth.  “Get some rest, Eggsy.  Don’t want you nodding off tomorrow in the field.”

“Wasn't nodding off,” you insist.  You hear the note of petulance in it as soon as it escapes from your brain and leaves through your mouth, but Harry is right-- you are tired, and when you are tired you tend to regress into more juvenile forms of expression.  A very unbecoming quality in a kingsman-- and a possibly detrimental one to a young man attempting to be seen as an equal by someone who is, in every estimation, miles and miles and leagues and leagues above you.

His hand is still there, a warm weight, only his first finger brushing the skin of your neck, the rest of his hand pillowed along the collar of your shirt.  You only notice this warmth when it becomes absent.  Harry stands, leaving the papers where they lie, and heads for the bathroom of their hotel suite. 

Before he can get halfway across the room, you say his name.  You see him turn out of the corner of your eye as you push a few of the papers around the desk with your pointer finger.  The bedside lamp behind Harry is, in itself, an ugly fluorescent yellow, but it catches the right side of his profile from his thigh to his shoulder in a glow that you can only describe as _lovely_.

_Lovely_. 

Your eyes go unfocused again, somewhere in the no-man’s-land of the rightmost middle button on the jacket of his suit. 

Your earlier call of “Harry” lingers in the air, unfulfilled.

“Eggsy?” Harry parrots back after a moment, a single eyebrow held in curiosity just above the top of the frame of his glasses, hands rising to meet themselves over his midsection as he begins to undo his cufflinks with the unthinking ease of daily repetition. 

“Sorry, what were you saying again?” you ask for the second time that night.  You know you are _very_ tired by the way your eyes track up Harry’s body to meet his gaze with the slowness of a magnet dragging through molasses.  Heavy lids don’t help either. 

“Did you need something?” Harry asks neutrally.

And oh, he is _ever_ the gentleman. 

Later-- on another mission, in another city,-- you will use the same line on an unsuspecting mark in a hotel room very similar to the one you are in now.  You will raise your wrists and undo your cufflinks-- your $8,000 high-tech x-ray-impenetrable poison-powder-filled cufflinks-- in the same manner, and the woman you are spending the night with solely to gain the name of her mob-boss brother-in-law will melt like butter in a microwave.

“Eh,” you say, “I think I’ve forgotten.  Doesn't matter.”

Harry exhales shortly through his nose. “Well.  In case you remember, you know where to find me.”

“I don’t know, Harry,” you say, crossing your legs, a little more awake as you glance around with a feigned air of curiosity,  “it’s a pretty big suite.”

It’s not, actually.  But Harry’s crow’s feet deepen fleetingly, and he draws attention to them by minutely adjusting his glasses in that exact moment.  Perhaps it is purposeful.  He holds his disassembled cufflinks loosely in the other hand.

“Goodnight, Eggsy,” he says firmly.  You know the tone.  It is the one he uses when he is clamping down his amusement under the stern facade of a disapproving instructor.  He turns and strides towards the bathroom once more.

You turn as well, back to the table.  A smirk plays upon your lips.  You grip one of Harry’s abandoned folders in one hand, and you find that there is a lingering warmth upon the parchment strangely reminiscent of that which rested on your neck some short minutes previously.

Your smirk turns to a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> My "works" list on ao3 totaled seven before I posted this fic. Seeing as my one concession to superstition is my perverse view that seven is a highly unlucky number, I figured I had better post this, and even it out. 
> 
> (Any King's Speech fans recognize the tongue twister?)


End file.
